Some idiot decided to call it the 'NTV 650'/'Revere' in the UK. And they wondered why it didn't sell. Why didn't they just call it the Hawk like in the US???
1981 spoke wheel model was the one to buy, New Zealand import, 122 bhp. the tank at the rear you always bumped you in the zippy sternum,, I owned these new, a mistake in my youth hehehehe
I bought a 1978 GL1000 in 1990 which I still own to this day. I've ridden it coast-to-coast twice and still take it out to work and the pubs 2-3 times per week. Absolutely bulletproof engine and an utter joy on the highway.
Lovely machines but they aren't very good mechanically. What they are is (like Norton Commando) a glorious bodge by dedicated engineers vs. the idiot management who killed the British motorcycle industry. Bert Hopwood's book covers it nicely. I've a 1969 Triden in stock condition (a lovely restoration by my mentor) and a Miles Engineering framed project bike. They're fine Sunday rides but if you want a practical classic get a Norton Commando. They're cheap in the US because most Norton (and Meriden Triumph, and BSA) owners are elderly so these machines go for small money in great condition. Parts are readily available. WARNING: Moderns should understand in the magazine era revenue depended on adverts so most praise is really bullsh1t. IF you are already a VERY GOOD motorcycle mechanic you'll be fine, but the best mechanics are nearly all retired or dead of old age so study the (fortunately voluminous!) community literature.
HD is a joke... they sound like WWII Russian tractors.....+ HD won those races in 40's when no serious motorbikes were produced by other manufacturers...soon Italians and Japanese showed up and HD understood it was as garbage engineering...
It was probably just as well that the BSA-Triumph triples were not super big sellers because due to the somewhat cobbled together design ( the 2 designers wanted horizontally split crankcases like the Japanese & overhead cams but the company wouldn't spend the money so they were stuck with the more difficult to assemble & more leak- prone vertical crankcase sections plus leak prone pushrod tubes which made much more difficult to assemble, so it's not likely they would have kept up production wise with much of a sales volume. Good video on what initially went wrong.
I bought a brand new chrome Royal Enfield Continental GT650 2 years ago and finished the first phase of the slightly modified rebuild two months after bringing him home. I made just a few modifications to give him the classic cafe racer style. All the work was done with my own hands, except that I had the original seat wrapped in new leather by a local upholsterer. I wanted to stay as true as possible to the original cafe racer spirit by making as few modifications to the original bike, while giving it a raw street racer feel. I think it's beautiful, and it rides brilliantly. I first stripped and shortened the rear end to the length of the original seat, then had the seat reupholstered with nicer leather (my wife has to sit somewhere when we visit local cafes), plus I installed a short front fender with blackened fender bracket. Then I swapped the bar risers with clip-ons to lower the bars, and also lowered the headlight and gauges for an aggressive stance. I swapped the original marker lights with miniature LED markers bolted onto the new headlight bracket, plus I installed a large LED strip tail light with integrated signal lights onto a hand made bracket as well as installed bar end mirrors and signal lights for a stripped down look with more visibility. A nice cross between the future and past. For now the Enfield rides wonderfully, but future mods will include adjustable front and rear suspension, upgraded master cylinder and clutch, new tires to fit the original 18" wheels and some slight paint details. Maybe after a few years I'll consider some S&S performance upgrades. Who knows...
I had one of these 500s ...I think it was a 1975. It was my first motorized vehicle, before I had even driven a car. I didn't even ask my parents if I could buy it, I just did at the the age of 17 in 1982. It was highly addicting to race it up and down my suburb Seattle street as fast as it would go, and man was it fast. It was a sickness (the speed) and I would run the bike up and down the street for hours at a time over and over. The whole trick was getting it to slow down in those straight-aways (I immediately got really good at downshifting). Taking corners or turning it seemed to me to be its biggest problem as the three cylinder bike seemed to want to right itself at a time when you absolutely wanted the opposite to happen. I had it about 6-8 months before crashing it into the back of a pickup truck that was making a left turn in front of me. I tried to swerve to the right while downshifting but the bike didn't turn. I was still going really fast (I still have a speed problem and gave up bikes because of it), hit the truck and flew about 100 feet in the air landing on my head cracking the helmet. The gas tank split right open and doused me in fuel. I never sparked and there were no flames. Broke both my arms. Happened right in front ...I mean smack dab in front of my high school my senior year. I was probably exceeding 100 in a 25 mph speed zone that day. Not the dumbest thing I have ever done but a close second and somehow I'm still alive to tell the story. Those bikes were dangerous. If you ride one of these, respect it, and don't ever count on it turning like a regular bike.
Follow the Leader He's On a Honda! This was Honda's ad campaign slogan in and around the time when the Gold Wing made its debut. And as the primer leader of the industry, Honda was poised to lead the industry to tap into the undeveloped cross-country luxo-touring market. The Gold Wing was conceived and developed to be the successor to the ubiquitous CB750 and related UJM models as well as showcase the reliability of Honda. And not just Honda motorcycles, but their up & coming burgeoning automobile business as well. Now, if a rider could ply the newly minted Interstates on a turn-key reliable Gold Wing motorcycle, then it stands to reason any driver could drive with confidence in a Honda Accord or Civic too! Outstanding video! This '98 Valkyrie owner/operator appreciated all the commentary & all the photos of the various Wings! Well Done!! Book 'Em Dano! Happy Gold Wing 50th Anniversary!
My ‘69 is all original. I’m still working on it, but when it’s used, it’s reliable and handles like a dream. If I stop using it at least weekly, it won’t easily start. After a month without use, it requires a resurrection! It has been a daily ride for months in a couple occasions over the years. I love it. It sounds amazing, and when my friend found it and acquired it, we found out it had belonged to my favorite uncle for a couple years, in the early 70’s. He was the second owner. My uncle passed decades ago. But I’m happy to be the owner of a machine that was his secret dream. He kept it hidden from his wife and from my grandmother, and it was kept in the garage of my grandfather’s real estate office. Now it is a family heirloom.
I had a CX500A: CX500 "solid handling".. you must be be joking, she wallowed like a hippo in mud on the bends, but was a solid tourer and quite fast for 500cc. Super easy maintenance. I did so want the 500T when I was a lad. 650T was the better model.
As a former owner of a CX500 Turbo I can say it is the bike from the past I miss the most. To say the bike had quirks sounds bad. It was more of an eccentric sort of bike. It had style, got lots of looks. It had a learning curve to ride it to it's fullest potential. Spooling up the turbo in a curve was just something you didn't do and if you were cruising into a sweeping curve with the turbo boosting the handling was difficult due to the shaft drive more so than the turbo. Had two other bikes with shaft drive and experienced the same problem. ( Honda V65 Sabre and Kawasaki Concourse ) The bike had amazing brakes and could handle the stopping from high speeds. The TRAC front suspension was another plus for that bike. No other bike has given the thrill of experiencing the turbo hitting maximum boost and you had better have been gripping the handle bars tightly when it happened.
I remember in the late 70's getting off my T140V Bonnie one evening to gaze at ratty used bikes through the window of a ratty back street used bike shop. Never saw that shop open, the bikes hardly ever seemed to change. Everything dusty and chaotic. Looked like a doomed shop. Saw my first brick-tank Trident literally stacked against a pile of very tired looking machinery. Loved the idea of the engine but the rest of the machine looked damned ugly and intimidating. No way would I have bought one. Might have been tempted by the refreshed version if foiund in decent shape but moved on to Ducati and then a Guzzi LM 2 instead. The Italians knew how to make reasonably solid and charismatic bikes that held their place in the market even though the fundamentals were dated. My Bonnie wasn't particularly reliable. Us Brits had lost the plot by that point. If you didn't want a Jap bike but wanted something nice, you mainly had to look to Europe. Sad thing is, as the video highlights, it didn't have to be like that. We had the engineering talent but lacked competent leaders.
I'm always blown away by the fact that so many do not recognize the reality that all people have a final moment of earthly life and that ultimately, God, and eternal salvation is truly all that matters
Good visuals throughout. A couple points: As is documented elsewhere, Honda did *not* set out to make a tourer as you state. The GL1000 was designed from the very beginning to be a superbike that could challenge the Kawasaki Z900/Z1000 -- it was only after seeing how people in the U.S. market found it to be great for touring (and the press panned it as not a competitive superbike) that Honda started focusing on touring. The GL1000 also was not the first liquid cooled bike in the era, see e.g., the Suzuki GT750 (aka, the "water buffalo"). Please keep these vids coming! There were a couple other minor issues with what was presented, so just dig a little deeper before stating "facts" that undermine your credibility. Overall though, nice work.
Without question the Gold Wing was a performance motorcycle. But I truly feel that Honda wanted to use its motorcycle division to draw attention to their fledgling auto business. And at that they succeeded! Happy Gold Wing %50!!!
I was an original owner of a Candy Glory Red '79 complete with a factory Euro-kit, gold anodize painted Comstar wheels, drilled rotors. For a brief period of time I ran it with a Maxi-X exhaust: 6 into one into two short megaphones and no actual mufflers. The sound was too intense and I found someone with a stock exhaust and we did a swap. For the best in CBX sound ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WgSpZnOiS6E.html and ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DrejSMvYihA.html Enjoy!
The highest speed wheelie I ever did was on my A4 same as one at 4:10. It was around 115mph, i had my mate who weighed around 15 stone on the pillion. It was on the brow of an over pass, the front wheel lifted and stayed around a foot of the ground for a good 150metres. When we got off the bike my mate complimented me on an impressive wheelie. What he didn't know was it wasn't planned, I nearly soiled myself and it was because of his extra weight that the front wheel came up. That was the only bike i cried about having to move on. However.... I know where it is and who has it. It is now in the south of France being turned into a classic endurance racer
I got to experience doing a valve adjustment on one of these when I was in School, but I can't remember if it was a shim over or shim under bucket,I e never seen one or worked on one since,glad I got to experience that
As the owner of a CX500TC for over 30 years, I would like to revise the commentary a little on the reasoning behind the 650TC. It was not a case of turbo-lag that prompted this change but rather that off-boost / on-boost linearity that was mentioned. Off-boost on the 500 was pretty horrible and once the 19psi kicked in, the bars were nearly ripped out of your hands. The 650 was an attempt to get more off-boost power and by lowering the PSI that the turbo made on the 650, provide a more linear transition between off and on-boost. The turbo is located in the same place on both bikes so lag would be the same. I have owned the Seca 650 TC and also the 1984 GPZ Turbo from Kawasaki. Although the Kawi was definitely the best of the bunch as far as turbo execution was concerned, my heart still beats for the original CX500TC (I still have it!). Oh, and the CX500TC was also the first to have wind tunnel tested, integrated bodywork.
Location and distance where a turbo is located have nothing to do with Turbo lag. It is all to do with how fast the turbo spools up. Even if the turbo was five feet away somewhere on the bike, the millisecond difference from either location would not be noticable.
